A brokerage intranet is the glue that keeps everything together and the filing cabinet that keeps it all sorted. They increase efficiency, boost productivity, reduce information overload, enable true mobility, and drive engagement.

Moxi Works Hub is the ultimate brokerage intranet. With over 1.5 million agent sessions, brokerages use it as a center for announcements, multi-media, documents; the one stop shop for all of their communications.

Search

Quickly find the agents, staff, documents, and client presentations with one search box. That’s right, through keywords, Hub is able to pull up all the relevant information from the agent’s search. No more time wasted searching for something you could find in ten seconds. Sounds like a productivity booster!

Documents library

Every document within your brokerage is organized within the hub and is searchable in one central location. Set permissions for each document, ensuring the right people see the right information and documents. This helps when you want your managers and higher-ups to have different information than your agents.

Host multi-media

Sure, it’s nice to have a place to store all of your documents, but what about your multi-media? Your videos, photos, and other brokerage collateral you’ve spent precious time on. The Hub is your communications center for it all. Have a new TV commercial coming out or an online ad campaign running? Give your agents a sneak peek inside the Hub!

Agent roster

Find contact information for every agent and staff member within your brokerage. The roster allows collaboration among agents and staff. It even makes referrals within a brokerage very simple.

Tools & services

All the tools and services your brokerage provides are found in one place. Everything from marketing to transaction management to your MLS. This is the power of the Moxi Cloud, integrating everything a brokerage needs in one place, with Single-Sign On (SSO). Provide links to tools and services that agents use every day, so they have to click around less.

Announcements

Post announcements you’d like all your agents to see or remind them of ones they’ve received in email form. Notify when upcoming events are around the corner or when their taxes are due. Your brokerage value proposition can get a lot more attractive when an agent only needs to log into one place to see it all.

Want to learn more about Moxi Works Hub? Click here and watch the video below.

Data is the currency you will need in order to exist in the very, very near future. The real estate industry won’t be able to stick their heads in the sand on this one, especially since the majority of industries are already embracing data with open arms. Brokerage data is quickly becoming the soul of the brokerage business that keeps its heart beating and its legs moving.

Why this is happening

The thing many don’t realize, is that data isn’t just a list of numbers. Data is what integration is literally made of. Data = integration. Ever wonder how you could log in to your brokerage’s intranet and have everything you need right there? The answer: Data.

Everything is moving to the cloud. Data gets stored and managed in the cloud. Much of it gets stored and managed by Amazon Web Services. Their data saw revenues soar to over $12.2B in 2016. Salesforce, another data management platform, generated $6.67B in fiscal 2016 revenue. Last quarter, Microsoft’s commercial cloud business exceeded a $10B annual run rate. The company is still projecting this number to hit $20B by 2018.

Data is taking over the world and brokerages have no choice but to hop on the bandwagon. The future of the brokerage depends on how they manage their data.

The ecosystem

Data is useless if it doesn’t work flawlessly together and isn’t stored in a shared environment. Picture your brokerage data like an ecosystem. Remember those miniature ecosystems built in a plastic bottle that every generation has to make in their elementary science class?

An ecosystem is a collection of complimentary applications all working together, sharing data, that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Any computer you’ve ever used in the modern age has its own ecosystem. Whether it’s that Epson printer you’re using or the many applications you go through in a day like Skype, QuickBooks, or Adobe, everything works together as soon as you install it. If you don’t like an application, you delete it and get another one. It’s as simple as that.

Our open platform is where your brokerage apps get their data. The three core data sources of a brokerage data exchange are:

Property data

Brokerage and agent data

Consumer data

How to cope

Whether you’re climbing 29,035 feet up Mt. Everest, the tallest point on earth, or looking to grow your brokerage – preparation is key. A solid data exchange plan isn’t something that can happen for a brokerage overnight, unless they choose to get advice and help from the experts.

For instance, many might say that a brokerage platform only needs to have those three data points working seamlessly together. But that’s just not true. When it comes to a truly open platform, they should also have integration with the cloud environment with Microsoft and Google and an open API allowing other technologies to integrate. API is what allows the integration to happen.

Moral of the story: educate yourself, so you can future-proof your brokerage today for what’s to come.

Looking to the future

This isn’t meant to scare brokerages, it’s meant to warn them. While many things in the future are uncertain and we can’t know for sure exactly what will happen and when, we do know that data will be the star of that show. Whether it’s Amazon, Netflix, or the brokerage down the street, businesses will survive and thrive with the data they have and the way they each choose to use it. The conqueror of data will be the conqueror of business and vice versa.

Our entire existence at Moxi Works is built on the goal to make brokerages more profitable by making their agents more productive. Agent recruiting and retention will always exist and while it does, we’ll exist to make it easier for the brokerage to do just that. If this all sounds super overwhelming and you have a slight headache, it’s probably time to pick up the phone and call someone that can advise you and simplify this major step to provide your brokerage with a solid future. Hint: Moxi Works is chalk full of advisors.

York Baur – CEO, Moxi Works

Redfin went public last week, raising well over $100M at a valuation of $1.5B. That’s what all the media is focused on, but what does it mean to you the brokerage owner?

The bad news is that you should be concerned. Redfin has deep pockets, deep technology, and now has access to the public markets to raise more capital as needed to grow further. They invest tens of millions of dollars in their technology annually, have a great website, and spend lots of time and money driving traffic to it. Like it or not, they’ll be a factor, and they’re going to put pressure on you to deliver better technology and a slicker experience for both your agents and their consumers.

The good news is that you have everything you need available to you to compete successfully. How can I be so sure? Because Seattle-based Windermere Real Estate has had Redfin operating in its home market of Seattle for 12 years with $200M of capital, and despite all the hype, tech and money, Redfin still has only 2.6% market share compared to Windermere’s 21%. Even more important, Windermere did 38% more transactions last year than 5 years ago in the tightest inventory market we’ve seen in a long time.

How can Windermere continue to dominate in the face of Redfin? And Zillow for that matter (also based in Seattle’s tech-centric market), supposedly siphoning away business by selling leads to the highest bidder? And how can you do what they’re doing? The answer is:

Continue to focus on agent’s sphere of influence – the people that already know, like, and trust their agents. Sound obvious? It is, but I’ll bet you’re not doing it enough. We talk to brokerages across the country every day who are distracted by chasing a lead generation battle that they can’t win. How are you seriously going to compete with the billions of dollars of capital that Redfin, Zillow, and Realtor.com spend every year driving consumers to their sites? You can’t. Period. Lead gen will continue to be a small piece of your business, but that’s it – a small piece. The biggest piece of your business is the core business, which is transactions coming from consumers an agent already has a trust relationship with.

Quit focusing on buyer leads. Every realtor and broker wants a seller, not a buyer if they have the choice. Redfin generates buyer leads. Zillow generates buyer leads. What’s the overwhelming source of seller leads? It’s an agent’s sphere. Control the inventory in your market by concentrating agents on their sphere, and you make money. There are only around five million homes transacted every year no matter how many buyer leads are generated – don’t you want to control the seller side of that equation?

Control and centralize your data. Windermere decided years ago to put an open platform in place. It’s like a power strip where they can plug in all their agent tools and have them work together. How? By putting all their property data, agent and brokerage data, and consumer data in one place. Windermere currently has over 2.6M consumer names in that platform, allowing agents and the brokerage to market to those consumers to generate listings, using dozens of tools in various markets to do so. Do you have a centralized database of your agent’s contacts? What are you doing to help them stay in front of their sphere of influence?

Quit creating islands of data and technology. Windermere has taken the platform concept to heart, and has solved the problems of tools that don’t work together, redundant data entry, and not being able to get a comprehensive view of their business. A technology platform allows them to save millions of dollars annually in office staff time, custom software development, and management overhead. This is in sharp contrast to most brokers, who don’t have a technology strategy. They buy the latest shiny technology object, and don’t even ask the question of how it works with the other technology they have now or might use in the future. Agents are demanding a better experience, and that means not having to start over from scratch with every new tool you provide them, upload their database for the 17th time, or having to rekey data.

Training, coaching and sales discipline. Redfin has made much out of the fact that they hire agents and support staff as full-time employees, not contractors. But that’s not the big difference – we hire contractors in the tech world all the time, and they contribute just as much as our employees do. So what’s the difference? It’s not the person, it’s how they’re trained, coached, and held to a standard of how to do business. That means having a training program, providing good coaching (which means training your coaches), and having a technology (specifically a CRM system) that reinforces the sales discipline every day as agents do business. Windermere has trained over two-thirds of their agents in the Windermere sales discipline (heavily influenced by Larry Kendall’s Ninja Selling), puts an emphasis on managers doing agent coaching, and has built their discipline into their CRM to provide ongoing reinforcement.

With Redfin beating its chest on Wall Street, you need a response for your agents and your consumers – now. Do nothing and you’ll lose agents, because they won’t tolerate inaction. And don’t forget the Millennial agent who isn’t just comfortable with tech, they demand it as a necessary tool for doing business. But despite all the hype and money spent, Windermere did eight times as many transactions in the greater Seattle market last year than Redfin did. With performance like that, we’d all be well served to look at what they’re doing right.

Find out more about brokerage open platforms and how they work by clicking here.

The difference between closed and open platforms exposed

Takeaways:

An open platform differentiates a broker’s tool set, aiding recruiting and retention

The difference between a closed and open platform is monumental

A “Platform” is whatever you want it to be

Platforms have existed in technology for ages. Most industries have already adopted them, but it’s a relatively new idea for a residential brokerage. I’ve noticed that the word “platform” is being thrown around heavily right now – it’s the 2017 buzz word and because of that, it’s starting to lose its meaning.

Some of these vendors that are calling themselves “platforms,” however, don’t actually do what they should and because of that, you’ll need to know what to look for. There are five basic services that a proper platform should have and offer:

Property data that can be shared across all tools eliminating redundant entry

Brokerage and agent data that’s up to date

Consumer data so technology can help agents manage their SOI

Integration with both Microsoft and Google cloud environment to easily and securely share data across tech companies

An API (it allows other tech companies to integrate and share common data)

Let’s also put some rumors to rest. Just because you use a platform doesn’t mean you need to embrace the entire platform. It would be insane for a single brokerage to use every single one of our 30 integrated partners. A platform is whatever you want it to be for your brokerage.

Also, Security isn’t an inherent problem in open platforms just because a system is open, doesn’t mean it’s insecure. YouTube for instance, is an open platform site. No one is afraid to use it.

Closed vs. Open Platforms

I have to shed light on how important the distinction between a closed vs. open platform is. Many vendors that call themselves “platforms” are just products that sit on a database with no API – meaning they have no way to communicate effectively with one another. Here are some examples:

Open platform: Microsoft Windows. Windows is an operating system that allows you to download whatever you want, whether that’s QuickBooks for your taxes or Adobe Photoshop, and delete the apps you no longer want or use. If apple is more your speed, think iPhone and the AppStore.

Closed platform: Video game consoles. If you buy a game for Xbox and you get a Sony PlayStation, you have to buy your games all over again. The choice is not up to you if you ever decide to switch.

As a broker, this means with a closed platform you have to go with whatever tools the vendor chose to work with OR the vendor built it all themselves and can’t afford to evolve it over time at the same speed as competitors. Either way, it can be a disastrous future for a brokerage.

The reality is, no one can be great at everything. An open platform allows a brokerage to get all of the best tools out there, have them work together, and can change tools at will – hassle free.

Open Platform Benefits

If you’re a broker and you’ve already invested in some tech solutions over the past three or four years like a digital transaction tool, gifting, or lead partners, you don’t have to change them to get on an open platform; you integrate them and preserve your investment in agent training. That’s why an open platform is so dominant: the power and tools stay in the brokerages hands. They help companies retain the tools they love and find replacements for the ones they aren’t jiving with.

If you choose a platform provider for those benefits today, that provider can help you flawlessly transition as new tools come online in the future. At the end of the day that’s what everyone wants right? No headaches and a shorter list of items for a brokerage to worry about.

If those are not good enough reasons to use an open platform, then how about this: money. Maintenance and support are cheaper on an open platform because it leverages the entire community that makes up the cloud. Development time also decreases. Boeing doesn’t make aircrafts, they assemble them.

What’s an Ecosystem?

This is another term used in the platform realm. An ecosystem is a collection of complimentary applications all working together, sharing data, that make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Each platform has its own ecosystem that makes up the cloud.

Again, think of your iPhone. You can have all of your applications together so that the device becomes an indispensable business tool. You get to pick à la carte whatever applications you need and don’t have to worry about how they work together. If you find later you don’t like an application, you can delete it and install a different one.

Why a Brokerage Should Care

It’s no secret that the pace of change for real estate technology is accelerating. We know that there are hundreds of companies making technology for residential real estate, which makes for thousands of applications available for use today.

What this means to a brokerage owner is that there’s no way to predict which companies and applications are going to succeed or even to envision what technologies will come into the market in the future.

Having a platform and ecosystem of applications that run on it is the key to agent productivity and retention. If you don’t think that having a complete integrated technology platform and applications to offer your agents is important, talk to a broker that just lost an agent to Compass.

If you choose the right platform, you’re going to get most of the benefits that Upstream promises for your brokerage today and will future-proof your brokerage for what’s to come in the future.